Sylvia Pankhurst's Suffrage

Lucy Burns was a prominent suffrage leader of a group of women only in the United States [3]. She and her colleague Alice Paul, met at a university in England where they both became inclined by Emmeline Pankhurst who was the leader of the woman’s suffrage movement in England [5]. Burns and Paul joined the National American Women Suffrage Association and were founders of National Women’s Party when they came back to the states [5]. They both demonstrated to

The journey of women’s suffrage beings with an aspired women named Alice Paul, who revolutionize the rights for women everywhere. Walton refers, how the inspiration all had flipped-the switch in Alice Paul when she heard speech on the “Votes for Women,” from a women named, Christabel Pankhurst, which was interrupted abruptly due to Christabel spitting in a police offers face, and being taken to jail. Walton refers to the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) as being seldom out of the news during the winter of 1907,

Many women believed that the right to vote would improve their position among everybody. In Europe, the most vocal and active women’s movement was the British Women’s Movement, which was divided mainly into two groups. The first group was organized by Millicent Fawcell, who believed that women must demonstrate to Parliament that they should have the right to vote. Along with Fawcell, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia founded in 1903 the Women’s Social and Political Union. The main actions of this group was to call to attention the media and use of unusual publicity stunts to get their attention. These women used forceful tactics to get their message heard by pelting government officials with eggs, chaining themselves to lampposts, smashing out windows of department stores, and burning railroad cars. Even though these women did these daunting tasks only in Finland, Norway, and some American states allowed women the right to vote before 1914. Another topic that was important to women besides the right to vote was peace movements. A famous women became the head of the Austrian Peace Society, who was Bertha von

By definition, women seeking the right to vote through organized protest, are known as suffragettes. Various suffragettes were so passionate to get the 19th amendment ratified, they took the situation to an extreme. These women were known as militant suffragettes. Militant suffragettes did many things to try to get as much attention as they could, such as: pick at the White House, throw things on the White House’s yard, protest in front of the White House, and much more. By doing such things, they would get arrested. The ultimate goal of these women was to get arrested, go to jail, cause a scene and get more attention to themselves. One example of how they did so was by not eating in jail. Because the women did not eat, the jail keepers were forced to force feed these women by law, “requiring inmates be fed three times in 24 hours.” When word got out about how awful these women were being treated, the press got involved. The press took pictures of how the women were being force fed and how they were being treated. This was the attention that these militant suffragettes were looking for all

The most popular Canadian suffragettes was Dr. Emily Howard Stowe. At first she created a club called the Toronto Women’s Literary Club but later it was called the Toronto’s women’s suffrage association. Soon many more suffrage movements spread over Canada. Women all over Canada started to fight for their rights. Many were imprisoned but they kept fighting to achieve their rights. Women claimed that they should get the right to vote because they wanted to bring new ideas into politics and at the same time they felt inferior to men because they were excluded. Later on, the females become more politically active in the suffrage campaigns. “In 1897, 17 of these women’s suffrage groups came together to form the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS).” Their way of protesting was rather peaceful, holding public meetings, writing letters to politicians. Later, in 1903 in Canada, when the suffrage movements started to get bigger, “The Women Social and Political Union” was founded. The movement became much more violent and the people were called the “The Suffragettes.” But when the World War happened the campaigns stopped and the women decided to help the men in battle. They spent time raising money for the war and knitting clothes for the soldiers. After the war ended the women gained more respect from the men and attained more freedom around the house. Furthermore, the

“Remember the ladies”, wrote boldly by the soon to be First Lady Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams in March 1776. Abigail Adams’s words were one of the first noted mentions in the United States foreshadowing the beginning of a long suppressed battle towards women’s suffrage. The fight for women suffrage was a movement in which women, and some men included, pleaded for equal rights regarding voting and women’s voice within the political realm. Women’s suffrage was not a matter of instant success; it endured a prolonged time to achieve. It was not until August 1920, about 14 decades later after Abigail Adam’s words, that the 19th amendment which had provided everyone the right to vote regardless of a person’s “sex”, had passed. Although the 19th amendment nationalized equal voting rights in the country in 1920, many states ratified this amendment in even later years. The lengthy period and long complex battles towards victory were the result of many obstacles between suffragists and anti-suffragists; obstacles which hindered the movement’s progress and which are not limited to: traditionally accustomed values, religion, split arguments within the movement, and other national political setbacks. If these setbacks were handled differently in a more urgent manner, women suffrage might have achieved earlier than 1920 or in a shorter amount of gruesome activism period.

Susan B. Anthony was perhaps the most well-known women’s rights activists. After the Civil War ended, Anthony refused to support any suffrage amendments to the Constitution unless the changes included women as equals to men. According to history.com, Anthony believed that any amendment that granted African-American men the right to vote should not be ratified unless it granted women the right to vote as well. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another well-known activist, was National American Woman Suffrage Association’s first president with Susan B. Anthony as the second. Anthony kept fighting for the cause until her death in April of 1906. Unfortunately, she didn’t live to see the changes she made. Neither did Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Some scholars like Ellen DuBois, in The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement, argue that the vote was a complete necessity in order for women to assert their own foothold in the public sphere, defined by DuBois as “operating in the public world of work and politics.” Opposing this position, William O’Neill argued that the vote would provide no advance in the woman condition and that when the vote was gained, “feminists were in the same place they were before the movement even began.” Heidi Williamson does not necessarily take a side in this argument but she does proclaim that “voting ensures women’s reproductive and economic progress” because it causes candidates running for office to “cater” to the women condition in order to gain more support. As Williamson is simply observing what the vote did for women, and she does not speak to what the Women’s Movement hoped to attain, she does not intervene in the discussion between DuBois and O’Neill; however, using the premise of Williamson’s observations it is clear that women of the early twentieth century were motivated by the discrimination in the workplace to gain their right to ballot so that they could use the vote to strive for pay equality, a better environment in the workplace, and gain the possibility to advance their position in said environment.

One of them was Sojourner Truth. Her contribution in both movements was conspicuous. Born into slavery, she managed to escape and become a anti slavery speaker and activist. She was a highly visible figure and spoke at the first national women’s rights convention in 1850, and in 1851 delivered her most famous speech known as “Ain’t i a woman?”4 at the Akron women’s rights convention. Her main assessment was that excluding black women from the suffrage movement would just delay rights achievement for all women. She would also continually remind her allies in the abolitionist movement that black women were half the slave population, and that without changing the conditions of all women’s oppression, there would not be a complete Freedom for African

In 1918 it wasn’t fair for the women to take over all of the jobs. They should have been treated better. Although there wasn’t anyone around to help besides their children. A lot of the time the girls and boys would help out around the house. But mostly the women were cleaning the house, buying the food, harvesting the crops, taking care of the animals as well as their children. Women had a lot to go through when their husbands were away. Women's suffrage was something that needed to be seen

During the 19th and 20th century, a large number of feminists commenced and carried on different acts that supported the initiation and continuation of the Suffrage Movement and the advancement towards a more diverse world. Men of the time overpowered the women and so it resulted in the women, feeling forgotten and ignored despite all the work they have done for and with men, standing up for themselves and making multiple attempts to be granted the same and equal rights as the men. The results were not always positive, though, even though large amount of effort was put in for complete liberty. For example, Ontario's lawmakers did not approve of women's equal rights even though numerous petitions and bills were submitted to them for over 40

With women’s suffrage, I was a protester myself with the quality to uprise and represent. I also fought for equal pay for my fellow female protesters. Acting upon this by participating alongside the rallies as World War 1 horrified me, as I believed wars were not really the answer to mature beginnings or endings.

While the petition did fail, it still held major significance due to the fact that “the Fawcett Society counts its foundation from 1866” (Grant). This shows that Fawcett was an upstander because she was active in a cause she believed in, and therefore contributed in seeing it become a success rather than being a bystander and not trying to solve the problem. Two extremely crucial organizations, the LNSWS (a society with less members that mainly represented London) and the Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage (CNSWS) split. Fawcett originally remained with the LNSWS, but was later angered by issues in the society, resulting in Fawcett joining the Central Committee. This corroborates that Fawcett was an upstander since she found issues in a certain group, and didn’t settle with them, but rather moved on to a different activist group. Emmeline Pankhurst would later form the The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). While Fawcett had diverging opinions on the communities tactics, she would still “admire their courage” (Grant).

It was her bravery that took her opinion to be spread all around the nations for her to be heard by the government that was led by men only, without the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst the women had fewer rights than men but thanks to Emmeline the women could stand up to their rights. Even when women were against her she would still strike for her rights just as the great leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

Social change in Britain has been achieved primarily through the hard work of organized political groups. These groups created events to recruit and educate supporters of social equality to join them in fighting for progress. The Women’s Suffrage Movement between 1866 and 1928 in Britain is no exception to this trend. The reason for the great efficacy of these political groups, including the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Women’s Social and Political Union, was the women who pioneered the groups and fought alongside them to create the change that they believed in. The goal of these political groups was finally realized in 1928 with the passing of the Representation of the People Act. However, the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain would not have been successful without the influential actions of several significant women. In addition to the overall necessity of female leadership for British Women’s Suffrage, the central efforts of Millicent Fawcett, Lydia Becker, and Emmeline Pankhurst particularly played a large role in the movement’s success.